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Tell me about Portuguese

minirhyderminirhyder BerlinRegistered User regular
in Help / Advice Forum
So I'm looking for a linguist to tell me why Portuguese sounds the way it does.
Hearing the language, it reminds me of the languages spoken in the Baltic states (Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian) what with all the sh and zh sounds.
I did some light reading on it, and it seems that it had a similar history behind it as Spanish, and while they share quite a lot of words and roots, they sound completely different. Why?

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    davidsdurionsdavidsdurions Your Trusty Meatshield Panhandle NebraskaRegistered User regular
    Are you listening to Portuguese as spoken in Portugal or Brazil? And Spanish as in Spain or any number of new world countries?

    It's pretty fun learning the differences based on locality.

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    minirhyderminirhyder BerlinRegistered User regular
    Portuguese in Portugal, and I've heard South American and Spaniard Spanish.

    I found the similarities with Baltic languages because of the sh, zh, and ch sounds. Also the just general sound of it?

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    DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    I can't say why it sounds the way it does, but casually it sounds a hell of a lot like Spanish ... and then you try to understand it and you can tell it isn't Spanish. Always sounded like a hybrid of Spanish and French to me. My perspective comes mainly from an appreciation of Portuguese rap.

    I think Spanish had much more of a Moorish influence than Portuguese.

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    JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    minirhyder wrote: »
    So I'm looking for a linguist to tell me why Portuguese sounds the way it does.
    Hearing the language, it reminds me of the languages spoken in the Baltic states (Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian) what with all the sh and zh sounds.
    I did some light reading on it, and it seems that it had a similar history behind it as Spanish, and while they share quite a lot of words and roots, they sound completely different. Why?

    I think it is because Portuguese has far more phonemes than Spanish. It sounds like a lot of languages depending on what you are used to.

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